Hayek's Gift

I thought I had posted this, but it appears not.  Freddie gave Maynard a gift last year for the "holidays."
The mustaches just get worse and worse. It's like the picture of "Dorian Gray," somehow. Only in reverse. Or, something like that.

Gouging on CBC's "Invisible Hand"

A new show on the  Canadian Broadcorping Castration:  Invisible Hand.  Pretty interesting concept, and pretty edgy way of producing economics podcasts.

They did a show on price-gouging.  It is a really, really fantastic show on price-gouging.  (Phone call for Matt Zwolinski).  The little "experiment" they run is tremendous.  I will be using this podcast in every intro econ class I teach from now on.

(If you have trouble of getting the file to stream, you can download it here).

Finally, to my good friend Gavin Kennedy: "Invisible Hand" is the name of the show. It's not my fault. At least they didn't call it "As If By An Invisible Hand," so that's some consolation. (However, he does say "as if by an invisible hand" at about 6 minutes. Gavin: Please do what you do.)

Brilliant Satire

Okay, at first I was taken in.  But this is actually brilliant satire. 

I mean, it goes through the whole "don't have children" thing, and buy "credits," which is asinine, and often a scam to boot.  So, it could be serious.  But then, the giveaway:  If you really want to be "green," you will need to: 

Slow Down Your Breathing
      It sounds silly, but breathing is actually a major source of atmospheric carbon.  One of the ways you can reduce your Carbon Footprint is to breathe less.  That's right, breathe less!  You're probably asking yourself how that's possible, but believe it or not, yoga is a great way to slow down the metabolism and reduce the need for excessive breathing.  If you're not already into yoga, consider taking classes at your local studio.  Soon, you'll be breathing less, and as an added bonus, feel much less stressed out!

Okay, THAT is funny.  Well played, ma'am.  To reduce your carbon footprint, DRIVE to a yoga studio.  And since you will be having fewer children, you won't be needing to have all that heavy-breathing whoopee, either.  Stop all that "excessive breathing." Brilliant.  Because it's just goofy enough that it COULD be serious. 

(with a nod to the Blonde)

UPDATE:  As Trent M. notes in comments...

"My favorite part: on the "comments and coupons" page there is a coupon for "15% off 1 eco-friendly blunt trauma pet termination."

Single Payer

A number of people have written to express surprise that I "favor" single payer health insurance.  Not sure that's accurate.  I would prefer personal responsibility, and a competitive market in health care.  Modeled after the very successful, constantly cheaper, constantly better quality, service in Lasik surgery and other "elective" surgeries.  If someone, anyone, would even consider going in that direction, that would be fine.

Insurance would be for major problems, big surgeries, accidents.  You might have an annual deductible of $5k or more.  Doctors would advertise prices (yes, PRICES) of standard surgeries.

Does any of that sound familiar?  I didn't think so.  Instead, we have something really bad.  Single payer would be better than what we have.  Single payer is also better than ACA, by the way, which is why I am not happy about the decision yesterday. 

What we have is this (more below the fold):

A picture of 100 words

Click for an even more educational image.

Words of wisdom from John Cochrane

"The mandate was never the weakest part of this law as a matter of economics. It's the rest of the perfectly constitutional thousands of pages, and the perfectly constitutional thousands more arbitrary regulatory decisions that are the problem."

More here. Well worth reading.

The most redonkulus sentence I've read this month

"Doing research is therefore writing software."

Written by Matt Gentzkower and Jesse Shapiro.

More here.

What the Fudge?

Ran into an interesting journal business model this week. The American Journal of Agricultural Economics charges a page fee for accepted manuscripts. Not a submission fee for all manuscripts. Not an excess page charge for articles longer than some set limit.

Here's what their webpage says (way down at the bottom of "instructions to authors)":

"Major support for this journal comes from page charges of $40 per printed page for papers published, or a fraction thereof payable by the supporting institution or granting agency."

So a 20 journal page article will set you back $800. Weird but probably do-able.

But here's what their letter a couple days ago to Mrs. Angus said:

"Please be aware that AJAE levies page charges for accepted manuscripts in the amount of $95 per published page, and you should apprise any co-authors of your joint responsibility for this obligation in the event that your manuscript is accepted."

 That's $1900 for a 20 page paper.

People, that is some serious jack.

For those of you wondering why Mrs. Angus has any truck with the AJAE, she was working with a grad student from Ghana who was interested in tropical agriculture and they ended up with a joint paper. It cited a lot of AJAE pieces, so there it went (without them having read the fine print on the website, let alone them guessing the > 100% increase in fees the journal has levied).

If you were running a journal and wanted to use your fee structures to maximize the average quality of a submission, what would you do?

Is average quality of submission even the correct maximand? If not, what is?

Linkulus Maximus

Some links o' the day:

1.  A computer player that ALWAYS wins at Rock-Paper-Scissors (by cheating)

2.  Bird group goes after Obama.  Sounds Hitchcockian, but this is an interest group.  Which may be even scarier, now that I think of it.

3.  Not enough slurry bombers?  The fire, next time.

4.  Won't you PLEASE apply for food stamps?  This may be an important new party movement.

5.  Smarter lunchrooms, less childhood obesity?

With nods to the Ward Boss, Angry Alex, and the Blonde

The Wine Rack

Our good friend @Jeanne23 comes through with this product:  The WineRack!

Ladies, why wear a padded bra when you get the same effect, and a nice warm Merlot, with... The WineRack?  The male version, The BeerBelly, has several drawbacks.  First, while the WineRack enhances physical attractiveness, the BeerBelly is unattractive (outside of eastern North Carolina).  Second, body-temp red wine is fine.  Body-temp beer...not so much.